Babylon Sisters. Paul Di Filippo
the only universe any of us can know, of course. In fact, it might be the only universe that exists for any of us, if those physicists you’re always quoting know what they’re talking about.”
“Elena, we’ve had this discussion before. I keep telling you that you can’t apply the rules of quantum physics to the macroscopic world....”
“Oh, screw all that anyway! You’re just trying to change the subject. Aren’t you excited at all?”
“Maybe I would be, if I knew what it was all about. I still don’t understand. Is this new drug just another hallucinogen?”
“No, that’s just it; it’s much more. It alters your visual perceptions in a coherent, consistent manner, without affecting anything else. You don’t see anything that’s not there; you just see what does exist in a different way. And since sight’s our most critical sense, the effect’s supposed to be like stepping into another universe.”
I considered. “And exactly what kind of universe would one be stepping into?”
Elena fell into my lap with a delighted squeal, as if she had won the battle. “Oh Robert, that’s just it! It’s not what universe, it’s whose!”
“Whose?”
“Yes, whose! The psychoengineers claim they’ve distilled the essence of artistic vision.”
I suppose I should interject here that Elena was a student of art history. In our bountiful world, where the Net cradled one from birth to death, she was free to spend all her time doing what she enjoyed, which happened to be wandering for hours through museums, galleries, and studios, with me in tow.
“You’re saying,” I slowly went on, “that this magical pill lets you see like, say, Rembrandt?”
“No,” frowned Elena, “not exactly. After all, Rembrandt, to use your example, probably didn’t literally see much differently than any of us. That’s a fallacy nonartists always fall for. The magic was in how he transmuted his everyday vision, capturing it in the medium of his art. I doubt if any artist, except perhaps those like Van Gogh, who are close to madness, can maintain their unique perspective every minute of their waking hours. No, what the psychoengineers have done is to formalize the stylistic elements of particular artists—more or less the idiosyncratic rules that govern light and shape and texture in an individual perceptiverse—and make them reproducible. By taking this new neurotropin, we’ll be enabled to see not like Rembrandt, but as if inhabiting Rembrandt’s canvases!”
“I find that hard to believe....”
“It’s true, Robert; it’s true! The volunteers all report the most marvelous results!”
“But Elena, would you really want to inhabit a Rembrandt world all day?”
“Of course! Look around you! All these dull plastics and synthetics! Who wouldn’t want to! And anyway, it’s not Rembrandt they’ve chosen for the first release. It’s Vermeer.”
“Vermeer or Rembrandt, Elena, I just don’t know if....”
“Robert, you haven’t even considered the most important aspect of all this. We’d be doing it together! For the first time in history, two people can be sure they’re sharing the same perceptiverse. Our visual perceptions would be absolutely synchronized. I’d never have to wonder if you really understood what I was seeing, nor you me. We’d be totally at one. Just think what it would mean for our love!”
Her face—that visage I can no longer fully summon up without a patina of painterly interpretation—was glowing. I couldn’t hold outagainst her.
“All right,” I said. “If it means so much to you....”
She tossed her arms around my neck and hugged me close. “Oh Robert, I knew you’d come around! This is wonderful!” She released me and stood. “I have the pills right here.
I confess to having felt a little alarm right then. “You bought them already, not knowing if I’d even agree....”
“You’re not angry, are you, Robert? It’s just that I thought we knew each other so well....” She fingered her little plastic pill case nervously.
“No, I’m not angry; it’s just.... Oh well, forget it. Let’s have the damn pill.”
She fetched a single glass of water from the tap and dispensed the pills. She swallowed first, then, as if sharing some obscure sacrament, passed me the glass. I downed the pill. It seemed to scorch my throat.
“How long does the effect last?” I asked.
“Why, I thought I made that clear. Until you take another one.”
I sat down weakly, Elena resting one haunch on the arm of the chair beside me. We waited for the change, looking curiously around the room.
Subtly at first, then with astonishing force and speed, my perceptiverse—our perceptiverse—began to alter. Initially it was the light pouring in through the curtained windows that began to seem different. It acquired a pristine translucency, tinged with supernal honeyed overtones. This light fell on the wood, the plastic, the fabric in my mundane apartment, utterly transfiguring everything it touched, in what seemed like a chain reaction that raced through the very molecules of my whole perceptiverse.
In minutes the change was complete.
I was inhabiting the Vermeer perceptiverse.
I turned to face Elena.
She looked like the woman in Young Woman with a Water Jug at the Met.
I had never seen anything—anyone—so beautiful.
My eyes filled with tears.
I knew Elena was experiencing the same thing as I.
Crying, she said,”Oh Robert, kiss me now.”
I did. And then, somehow, we were naked, our oil paint- and brushstroke-mottled bodies shining as if we had stepped tangibly from the canvas, rolling on the carpet, locked in a frantic lovemaking unlike anything I had ever experienced before that moment.
I felt as though I were fucking Art itself.
* * * *
Thus began the happiest months of my life.
At first, Elena and I were content merely to stay in the apartment all day, simply staring in amazement at the most commonplace objects, now all transformed into perfect elements in some vast, heretofore-undiscovered masterpiece by Vermeer. Once we had exhausted a particular view, we had only to shift our position to create a completely different composition, which we could study for hours more. To set the table for a meal was to fall enraptured into contemplation of a unique still life each time. The rules of perceptual transformation that the psychoengineers had formulated worked perfectly. Substances and scenes that Vermeer could never have imagined acquired the unmistakable touch of his palette and brush.
Tiring even of such blissful inactivity, we would make love with a frenetic reverence approaching satori. Afterward the wrinkles in the sheets reminded us of thick troughs of paint, impasto against our skin.
After a time, of course, this stage passed. Desirous of new vistas, we set out to explore the Vermeer-veneered world.
We were not alone. Thousands shared the same perceptiverse, and we encountered them everywhere, instant signs of mutual recognition being exchanged. To look into their eyes was to peer into a mental landscape utterly familiar to all us art-trippers.
The sights we saw— I can’t encapsulate them in words for you. Perhaps you’ve shared them, too, and words are unnecessary. The whole world was almost palpably the work of a single hand, a marvel of artistic vision, just as the mystics had always told us.
It was in Nice, I believe, that Elena approached me with her little pillcase in hand. She had gone out unexpectedly without me, while I was still sleeping. I didn’t complain, being content to sit on the balcony and watch the eternally changing Mediterranean,